


Take Me Instead

by Mai_Blade



Category: Bleach
Genre: Angst, Do Not Post on Another Website, Don't copy to another site, Established Relationship, F/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-12-07 17:01:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20979311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mai_Blade/pseuds/Mai_Blade
Summary: There are times when we wish we could trade places with someone, even when that someone is dying.Especially if we love that someone.





	Take Me Instead

_It’s quiet._

Unohana-taicho says there’s nothing anyone can do for you. She’s says all that’s left is to hold your hand and stay by your side.

Until you leave.

I know Unohana-taicho tried her best, that she used all her medical skills and healing _kido_, but I still think that there must be something she didn’t do. I shouldn’t feel like this. I shouldn’t be so ungrateful. Unohana-taicho gave her best but there are things even she cannot prevent, things she cannot heal.

Is your chest still rising and falling? Yes, barely…

She knows what you mean to me. It grieves her that she can’t save you, that she can’t help keep you by my side. I saw it in her eyes when she delivered that final, terrible verdict, her delicate hand on my shoulder, as though to soften the blow.

_Why you?_

Your hand is so cold and your skin is so pale. I hold it with one hand and stroke it with the other. I can scarcely hear you breathe between partially parted lips. It scares me.

Keep breathing, keep breathing, please…

I’m too scared to cry. We’re alone now and I can’t hear anybody nearby. Maybe Unohana-taicho asked everyone to keep clear, to give us privacy. I’m thankful for that. I want nothing to distract me from these last moments I’ll have with you. Wait, that can’t be right. You’re not here, not really. When was the last time you were with me?

…I don’t remember the last time I saw you when you were you and not this silent form before me now. I don’t remember what we said, if we said ‘goodbye’ or ‘I love you’. I don’t remember if we embraced, if we kissed, if we touched hands, or if we cast one last glance at each other.

How could we have known? If we had, we would have even parted that day?

I don’t know what happened, I’m still not sure even now, but when they brought you to Fourth Division for treatment I wanted to help you. I want _so much_ to help you, to _save_ you. Unohana-taicho says I wanted to help you so much that I was stuck incapable of it. I wanted it too much, she said. Maybe she’s only trying to comfort me for what I see as my own failing. All I could do was watch while she tried to save you, while Isane-fukutaicho helped.

Staring at your silent, unresponsive form as they worked, I had wanted to trade places with you, so that you would be alive even if it meant that you had to watch me in your place and wish for the same thing.

I wonder if you can feel my hands holding yours. I wonder if you can feel my fingertips as they brush the sides of your face. Are you in there somewhere still? The you whom I love and adore, can you feel me near you now? I will not leave your side. I know you would not leave mine. Our love was mutual; frail, awkward, and hesitant, but mutual and ours.

I should have asked you to marry me.

I wanted to. I was happy to be around you. I was happy to be with you. I just wasn’t sure if you felt the same. I wasn’t sure if you wanted to spend the next few centuries of our long lives together as husband and wife. I had little to offer you. I had no home, no wealth, no influence. I could offer only myself and that seemed to me to be such a pitiful offering. Were you happy to have been with me? Do you regret that you spent even a fraction of your life as my beloved when there were others out there so much more confident and successful than I?

What will I do without you? I will live, I suppose, but how empty and sad it will be as I am sure to be constantly reminded that you are longer around, that you won’t come through the door and smile at me, that we can no longer touch or talk or see each other. Already I miss you and this ache inside me… no, no, no. Don’t go there, not yet. 

You are still here, such as you are. I must focus on that for soon even that will be gone.

I am a shinigami. You are a shinigami. Our function is to reap the souls the departed but what about when we die? What happens to us? Whether our souls are recycled or our bodies break down and become the energy that helps form all of Soul Society… I find no comfort in either thought, in either transition open to you. If your soul goes back to the world of the living will I ever find it again? If you become the energy that helps shape Soul Society shall I find comfort in treading on your being? No, I want you here with me, tangible and within my reach.

I want you to live. I want to live with you. Is it really so much to ask to be together?

_Are you still breathing?_

Pale, cold, still… please open your eyes again. Please smile at me. Please say my name. Please get up and get well and laugh and **live.**

_Please… if there are any gods out there… if anyone can hear me..._

_Take me in her place, I beg of you. Take me instead. Please, please, please…_

* * *

**We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love. **

**~Madame de Stael **

**Author's Note:**

> An old one-shot from my Hanataro and 'kill the reader and make characters sad' phases from long ago.
> 
> There's criminally little of him in the manga. :(


End file.
